The Echo at Rooke Court

by Harriet Smart

  “I do, and I am surprised how generous you are to him.”

  “Mrs Maitland thinks he has an uncommon amount of charisma. Perhaps that is blinding me.”

  “Then certainly we must both talk to him,” said Carswell. “I only wish I had been able to look at those bloodstains again. You said that Lady Maria and Mrs Maitland actually saw him in the woods wearing the smock?”

  “He was wearing a smock,” Giles said. “They have not identified the one we found.”

  “But they might, if they were to see it? I believe these things sometimes have distinctive embroidery. That is the sort of thing women notice.”

  Giles nodded, and Carswell sank back on his pillows. “Perhaps in a day or two I can get back to Hawksby and...” He sighed. “But then I would be a fool. It would probably kill me.”

  “I’m glad to see common sense breaking out in you again, Mr Carswell. In the first instance, let’s talk to Hurrell here and see what comes of it,” said Giles, going towards the door. “Perhaps the sight of you in your sick-bed will make him confess all his sins to us!”

  Lord Rothborough consented and asked if he might attend the meeting. He then suggested Mark Hurrell be brought up to the house after dinner.

  “What did you make of him?” Giles said.

  “I liked him, as I liked him when I met him before. He is not in the ordinary style and that makes him attractive. We all like novelty, after all. At the same time, his manner is entirely correct. I could not be offended by him, although I felt I should be, given the circumstances. It will be interesting to see what he has to say for himself.”

  ~

  By the time Mark Hurrell came up to the house, Felix felt well enough to get out of bed, so the conversation did not take place in his bedroom, but in the cool formality of the great sculpture gallery. Here they sat at a round table supported by an angry-looking gilded eagle, while around them the famous Holbroke Canova and other sinuous, sensual pieces writhed and danced in their white marble perfection.

  “I have always wanted to see this room,” Mark Hurrell said. “My mother described it to me once. She and my father had come to a reception here; I’m not sure when it was. Perhaps when they were first married.”

  “It is your mother we would like to talk about,” Lord Rothborough. “If that is not an impertinence?”

  “No, not at all. Did you ever meet her, my lord?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Lord Rothborough said. “I’m glad to know my family received her at least once. The dislocation between our two families has been regrettable. Politics ought not to divide neighbours.”

  “I do not think it was politics,” said Hurrell. “My father has no taste for society. That party the other week was an anomaly born of desperation.”

  “In what way?” Lord Rothborough said.

  “You guessed at it yourself, my lord. Your daughter mentioned that you thought it was in order to introduce her to my brother – whom my father wished to see married.” He gave a slight grimace. “A strange plan, but Arthur must have provoked him into it. The most curious thing was that my father wrote to me and asked me to come up after dinner. To receive such a summons – that was strange enough, and then to find the house en fête –”

  “And your brother did not believe you had been invited, I recall,” Major Vernon.

  “No. I should have brought the letter with me, but I was idiot enough to think my word was still worth something. But my father did ask me to call on him that night. Why, I don’t know exactly.”

  “Because he knew it would spark a public argument between you and your brother, perhaps?” said Major Vernon.

  “I think not,” said Hurrell. “He would have been distressed if he had seen what you saw, Major Vernon.”

  “But he might have predicted such an outcome,” said Major Vernon, “given the state of things between you and Arthur?”

  “Perhaps he hoped to begin a reconciliation. Certainly that was what I hoped.”

  “Are you sure?” Major Vernon said.

  “Naturally.”

  “After what you had written in your novel, did you honestly think that would be possible?”

  Hurrell considered this for a moment.

  “I regret that and I hoped my father had begun to see that I did regret it.” He rubbed his face. “As I have said before, I was half mad when I wrote that book.”

  “Although it relieved your feelings a great deal to have set so much down on paper,” Major Vernon said.

  “Yes, but I should have put it in the fire at once, instead of taking it to such extremes. I’m grateful, to be honest, that my father has managed to burn so many.”

  “We still have two copies,” said Felix, taking his from his pocket and putting it on the table. “I bought one in Edinburgh, and Major Vernon has the copy you gave to Mr Gray.”

  At this point Major Vernon added his own volume.

  “It was for sale in Edinburgh?” said Hurrell. “Oh dear Lord, I had not thought that – and you have read it?”

  “Yes, we have,” said Major Vernon. “With the exception of Lord Rothborough.”

  “Should I, do you think, Vernon?” said Lord Rothborough, taking up Gray’s copy.

  “I would rather you did not, my lord,” said Hurrell.

  “You should,” said Major Vernon. “It has its merits. There is a raw honesty about it, although it purports to be fiction. How was it you put it, Mr Carswell? Ah yes – it tells all the truths that can’t be told.”

  Hurrell picked up the other copy and stared at it.

  “I suppose that was my intention,” he said. “Though had I known what trouble it would bring me – but there is truth of a sort in it, as I felt it. But it does me no favours.” He put the book down and pushed it away. “I thought, and this was the most foolish thing, that perhaps if I wrote it as it felt to me, then my family might have some conception of who I was, after all – but that was sheer idiocy. They never could read me. I was always illegible to them.” He dropped the book on the table and pushed it away. “This was folly.”

  “Certainly,” said Major Vernon after a moment, “if you truly wished forgiveness from your father, it might have been better not to show him murdering your mother. Which you do, do you not?”

  “It is a fiction.”

  “A nicely observed one,” said Major Vernon. “The symptoms of her illness, in particular.”

  “Arsenic poisoning,” said Felix. “That was what you were implying? Yes?”

  “It is a fiction,” Hurrell said. “Those characters are not my parents.”

  Major Vernon shook his head.

  “A common fault in first novels is that they have too much of the memoir in them,” he said. “And there is so much else painted from life, only just disguised. Your entanglement with Miss Wytton, for example. Why would you take to the wings of fancy in this instance?”

  “Because I was angry at my father. I felt he was responsible for my mother’s death, even if he was not.”

  “Then it is nothing but a libel?” said Lord Rothborough. “And against your own father! How shabby. Come now, Mr Hurrell, surely not? You are a better man than that. At least I would hope so!”

  “What drove you to think in the first place that he was responsible?” said Major Vernon.

  “Because she implied it to me, and I was a foolish boy, half-mad with grief at losing her. You have read the book,” Hurrell said, turning to Major Vernon. “She told me she was being punished, and I thought she meant my father was behind it. And no doctors ever could say what was wrong with her. She simply seemed to fall ill for no reason.”

  “And the symptoms you list,” Felix said. “Where did you get those?”

  “Those are what she suffered.”

  “You did not consult a medical text at any time?” Felix said.

  “No. Why do you say arsenic poisoning?”

  “Because that is what your description suggests. Small doses over a period of time, causing inexplicable symptom
s – the inability to tolerate food, the congenital weakness, her hair falling out, and her hoarse voice. There have been similar cases.”

  Hurrell stared at Felix.

  “In truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dear God, I did not know. There was another thing. I did not put it in the book. I remember taking her hand towards the end and she could not bear it. Her fingernails were so sore, that the slightest pressure on her fingers was agony for her. And I remember they had curious stripes upon them, across the nail.”

  “That is also common with chronic arsenic poisoning,” said Felix.

  “So you think he may have poisoned her?”

  “If this is an honest account of what happened, then it is possible somebody did,” Major Vernon said.

  “It is how I remember it,” Hurrell said, “but I regret to say, my lord, that I did mean to libel him. I meant to blacken his name without having any real evidence except my memory of what happened. But it was all so strange, the way he took her to live at that house in Northminster.”

  “That would be Rooke Court?” Major Vernon said.

  “Yes,” said Hurrell. “She was in that curious room with the echo, and she used it to tell me she was being punished by my father. I did not know what to make of it, and I still do not! It has haunted me for years. Sometimes I feel I dreamt it all in my grief. I felt that my father was responsible in some way, but I could not understand how.” He reached for the book and searched for the passage. “There is a part I left out. It did not quite happen as I wrote it. On the last day I saw her, the day before she died, she said to me: ‘When I am gone, look below.’ I had no idea what she meant by it. I was afraid it meant she was going to Hell. ‘Look below’ – she said it twice.” He shook his head. “I suppose she was so unwell that she was raving. And I could do nothing to help her at all. And to think I believed I could help her now, with this foolishness...” He pushed the book away from him.

  “When I am gone, look below,” Major Vernon repeated after a moment.

  “Who knows what she meant,” Hurrell said.

  “Who indeed?” said Lord Rothborough, picking up the book again.

  “My lord, I would rather that you did not –” began Hurrell, but Lord Rothborough put up his hand to silence him.

  “Perhaps it is better that I do read it, Mr Hurrell,” he said. “For the sake of all concerned. Yes?” Hurrell nodded meekly, but he did not look at all happy. Lord Rothborough now got up and said, “And for the sake of Mr Carswell, who has been ill, we should finish this here. But you will not leave the village for a while, I trust, Mr Hurrell?”

  “No, my lord,” said Hurrell, getting up also. “I have no desire to do so. And thank you, gentlemen, for your time this evening. I do not know if it helps my cause or yours.”

  Major Vernon closed his notebook. “There are still a great many marks against you, Mr Hurrell,” he said, “that’s true enough. And if there is anything further you would like to say to me, I recommend that you do so, sooner rather than later. Honesty of that sort is always well received by a jury.”

  “I did not kill my brother,” Hurrell said. “Some malicious hand has worked hard to make it seem as if I did, but I swear on my mother’s honour that I did not kill him! In fact, I wish he were not dead, no matter how difficult and inconvenient that might be for me. I even wish he were here, wooing your daughter, my lord, and I was bound for New Zealand to do – well, who knows what! I would take a dozen horsewhippings from him rather than face putting him in his tomb. That is the truth, gentlemen, but whether or not you choose to believe me is in the hands of the fates. But I think, sir,” he said, finishing this little speech by turning to Major Vernon, “you are a friend of justice, and will not let an innocent man hang if you can help it.”

  After he had gone, Lord Rothborough said, “He speaks extremely well. There is some potential there, but I suppose we must imagine that it will not be realised. A pity. Facts are facts, after all.”

  “Circumstantial facts,” said Major Vernon. “I think I need to sleep on it. You, Mr Carswell, certainly should.”

  “Yes, quite,” said Lord Rothborough. “Go to bed, Felix.”

  Felix made his way back to his bedroom, feeling an extreme lassitude overtake him as he did. Eleanor was sitting on the window seat by the open window, gazing out into the night. There was only a night light burning, and she seemed insubstantial in the soft darkness, like something he had conjured up out of his fancy.

  He stood and watched her from the doorway, wondering if he should interrupt her. With some shame, he realised that she was not at all a creature of his own making, but someone with thoughts, ideas, dreams all her own. Like a conquistador seeing a dazzling mountain of silver and gold, her beauty and his own driving lust had blinded him to the reality of what marriage was. She was an uncharted country which he had to explore, slowly and delicately, before he could begin to understand her.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes,” he said, “if you don’t mind?”

  “No,” she said.

  He sank down on the window seat beside her. He found he was utterly exhausted, almost to the point of being bereft of speech, but aware at the same time that he must talk and talk well to her. So he sat and tried to think how to begin, but the words did not come. She had told him that he sounded insincere and he did not want to risk any more confusion.

  He felt her lean a little towards him, like a cat seeking warmth. So he put his arm about her, and soon she had wriggled closer until she lay with her head in his lap, so that he could stroke her hair.

  “I’m still angry with you,” she said, at length.

  “I know, and I deserve it,” he said. “I have been a brute.”

  “Would it be so awful if we were to have a child?” she said, after another long pause.

  “To be frank, it terrifies me. There is so much that can go amiss.” The nightmare he had had of poor Bennett and Eleanor now flashed across his mind and made him shiver. “I don’t like dancing with death.”

  “But you do that all the time,” she said, sitting up. “What else were you doing in Axworth? Major Vernon said it was as if you were going into battle.”

  “But – that is different. I do not feel about work the way I feel about this. I’m not ready for it. I am only just getting used to the idea of being a husband. And as you may have noticed, I am not very good at that yet. You must give me time. Please?”

  “I suppose so,” she said after a moment. “But you will promise to think about it, won’t you Felix? After all, I might already be – well, you know, after that night, before you went to Axworth.” She got up and crossed the room.

  “No, surely not?”

  “It’s possible,” she said. “Is it not?”

  “Oh dear Lord,” he muttered. It was indeed all too possible.

  “You are heartless!” she exclaimed, “I knew you were! I knew it!”

  And she ran from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Giles found Emma sitting alone in the small drawing room.

  “I have been playing the governess,” she said, “and have sent both young ladies to bed.”

  “That’s just as well. How did Mrs Carswell seem?”

  “She was subdued. How was Mr Hurrell?”

  “Still a puzzle.”

  “Oh, poor Maria. I know she is trying not to think of him, but I can see her imagination is stirred.”

  “It is just as well she was not there this evening,” Giles said, sitting down beside her. He glanced about the room, at all its subtle luxury that suited Emma so well. He wondered how he was ever going to provide her with even the barest comforts, the way things were going on. “As Lord Rothborough said, love is a most inconvenient emotion.”

  “Yes, but necessary,” said Emma, taking his hand. “I had a letter from your sister today,” she said. “She mentioned a bed.”

>   “Oh, yes. She wrote to me about it as well,” he said, and could not help sighing.

  “Do you not like the idea of it?”

  “It sounds excellent, except I’m wondering if we will have a house to put it in. If I have no post, then –”

  “Then we will live in lodgings on crusts. I don’t need a house,” she said. “You know that. Let alone beds or drawing rooms. I will give German lessons to young ladies.”

  “You shall do no such thing.”

  “Pride does not make puddings, Giles,” she said, with a smile. “And I don’t think you should be so gloomy. Who knows how all this will work itself out.”

  “You’re right,” he said, and kissed her hand. “Now before I forget – yesterday, you were about to tell me something.”

  “I was?” she said.

  “Yes, just as Lord Rothborough came in. About Sir Morten being a domestic tyrant.”

  “Oh, that,” she said.

  “You said, ‘And there are things about him which make one...’”

  “I did?” she said. “Are you sure?”

  “Perfectly. So what were you going to say about him?”

  “Oh, some nonsense, probably.”

  “But you never talk nonsense,” he said.

  “I do little but talk nonsense,” she said. “As you well know.”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  “What were you going to say? Even if it is nonsense, I should like to hear it. We were talking a great deal about Sir Morten tonight.”

  “It was that Mrs Hurrell has to serve him his dinner in his study and wait on him, as if she were a servant. Very shocking, isn’t it?”

  “That was all you were going to say?” he said, sensing a brittleness in her manner that was not usually there.

  “Is that not enough?” she said. “Is that not a disgusting example of domestic tyranny?”

  “Yes, very. But there was something else?”

  She hesitated a moment and said, “He might be one of those gentlemen who let their warm feelings carry them away a little.”

  “He might be?” Giles said. “Is he or isn’t he?”